Im a begginer to the grow game. I plan to build my own grow box and have a quick question regarding my lights. In reading other posts there seems to be an arguement between metal hialide and high pressure sodium lights. Which one is better for vegging. And what are your opinions about using leds for flowering. I know i would need to use the whole light sqectrum for the leds to work but are the worth it?
MH for veg and HPS for flowering. if you grow box is small may want to use CFLs or fluorescent tubes for veg 6500k. could save some money there but def hps for flower
LED's are sweet! I know at Wallgreens you can get 50 led Christmas lights for a whopping $5! There's guys out there vegging and flowering with LED's. However they have to be REAL GOOD LED's! Not all are the same. Check the power rating "Watts" and "Lumens". Look into Cree Procyon or Phillips Luxeon. Not the ones from china or Walmart. If It's under $500 they probably won't work. Although you can use general LED's for germination/sprouting. Stick with HPS for flowering unless you got a ton to drop on LED's..
thanks hydrolled thats what i needed to know..... Im stuck on lights it seems like everyone has a different opinion about whats best Very tricky hah
Metal halide for veg, hps for flower. Thats a big area for most of the led setups I have seen. A 600w hid setup would make the most use of the 4 x 3 footprint, and you could get killer yields.
so i need both hps and mh? i have read on gc that i could use mh for both veg and flower? Im clearly gonna have the room to run both if need be but if i can save the money yanno..... Fkin recession is killing bud sales by me everything got more expensive and im not willing to go to the ghetto to buy shit bud and worry about getting jacked in the process lol
Yes, you can veg and flower under mh but it isnt optimal. You can do both with hps as well. Just like flouros though different spectrums of light are more beneficial during different growth stages. Mh has a higher color rating for veg and hps has a lower color rating for flower. You dont need two different lights though, just two different bulbs. All you do is run a mh or mh conversion bulb ( depending on your ballast) for veg then switch to a hps bulb for flower. Getting the extra bulb doesnt cost that much more and it only takes a few minutes to swap bulbs.
I think I'm just gonna use cfls for my first grow..... Trying to keep energy use low and would rather not spend money to learn haha
also dont go by the equivalent wattage. go by actual wattage. example.... a 100w(23w actual) cfl is about 1600 lumens where as a 400w(105w actual) is about 6300 lumens
HPS Works just fine with vegging, the plant may stretch a little more then if you were using a MH But in flowering the HPS takes the cake. remember the plant needs more blue in veg and red in flowering and HID lights are probably the most efficient way of delivering these spectrums. I do not believe in led's and so therefore they don't exist... lol but no I don't think there very good on there own.
Agree'd. I use HPS for veg and flower, and I grow mammoth plants. If you can get a switchable MH/HPS thought would be great, but just an HPS system can grow amazing plants.
just use a dual bulb mh and hps combined buy the cheaper one because you will be replacing it after a couple of grows and they work killer it will make nice and tight le budos
i thought about it but the only ones i can find are 400w and i cant use that much energy right now.... im planning on using 200wattts of cfls for this grow and than upgrading over the summer